Star Wars VS. Starship Troopers.

Subnormal · Post by **Subnormal** » 2002-07-27 05:54pm

PS. sorry about the Typos, god I stayed up too late... Where the hell is an edit button. LOL.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-27 06:19pm

Look, Count Dooku (oops, capitalized that, accidentally), stormtrooper armor IS as strong as I am saying that it is. Your "evidence" against it is laughable. First of all, we do not know that there are no stormtroopers alive after the DS exploded. They would die off in twenty minutes if there were, and they could not have been any threat to anyone. Second (and more importantly), if there were no stormtroopers alive after the DS explosion that would actually make sense. Stormtrooper armor is resistant to high temperatures, but no impervious. Otherwise the existence of Magma troopers would be unnecessary. Second, high radiation levels can also overwhelm stormtrooper armor, but the suit grants considerable resistance to that, also. Third, stormtrooper armor does not protect all parts of a stormtrooper equally. It offers little protection in the "joints" of the armor, through which you can see the black body suit. This is necessary for the suit, because it needs to strike a balance between protection and mobility. A blast on the magnitude of the DS would do several things. First, it would vaporize almost all material within the area, including ST armor, which would likely be overwhelmed by such an explosion. Second, it would throw out any remaining solid debris at VERY high speed. Perhaps fast enough to penetrate the plasteel sections of the armor, and certainly at high enough velocities to compromise the integrity of the suit if it struck a trooper between the armor plates. You fell for the "resistant means impervious" fallacy. Stormtrooper armor is EXTREMELY good at protecting stormtroopers in a wide variety of conditions, but it can be overcome as was seen several times in the movies.

As for your comments that stormtroopers were killed by Ewoks, yes they were. That does not mean that their armor was poorly designed. We see in the movies that stormtroopers often cry out in pain/surprise when they are struck by stones thrown by Ewoks. Do you even realize that it is possible for a soldier to die if his armor does NOT fail? It is possible that those stormtroopers suffered from broken necks, concussions, or other injuries that did not represent a failure of the armor. Also, armor cannot "stop" a stone without imparting most of its energy onto something. In this case, that thing is the trooper. A soldier who is standing up cannot be hit by a rock that size and NOT fall down. The rocks were almost certainly very heavy, and their momentum would have knocked almost any human off his feet. This is consistent with the conservation of energy/momentum. You should also notice that the armor, in none of those scenes, was seen as failing (cracking, breaking, etc.) the armor is stronger than is necessary for the job of protecting stormtroopers against such attacks, but the soldiers wearing it are physically incapable of withstanding many attacks which the armor would be more than capable of stopping otherwise. I really don't know how to make this point any clearer, but I hope that elucidates it for you a bit. It should be noted that bullets cannot impart enough energy into the armor to really knock down a stormtrooper, much less give him any of the injuries which I described above. The only way that such weapons would kill a stormtrooper would be if they struck a joint. This represents a HUGE advantage that stormtroopers would enjoy over enemies armed with slugthrowers or weapons designed to create shrapnel effects. You compare stormtrooper armor to steel, but steel would be insufficiently strong (by a hell of a lot) to explain the incident in Lightsabers. Clearly Stormtrooper armor is built of stronger stuff.

The asteroid thing has been dealt with many times before, Dooku, and again you fall for the "either 100% or 0" fallacy. I really don't feel like explaining that one to you, so read Mike Wong's write up of the incident. It is fairly complete.

BTW, you BUTCHERED what Admiral Piett stated. The ISD fleet might have taken very little physical damage, also, it might have been a statement that a light freighter could not hope to sustain any asteroid impacts whereas we saw the ISD's taking many smaller impacts. I really do not see how the atmosphere would protect a planet's people from an asteroid. In the case of large impacts, in fact, it would superheat and form a concussive shockwave that might actually kill more people, so that is more or less irrelevent. I know of nothing that an ISD has that could stop such a massive asteroid, but it could certainly stop smaller asteroids (including ones that would destroy large cities). BTW, the asteroid bit is more or less irrelevent because the purpose of the thread was to put bugs/MI against stormtroopers and determine the likely victor. If such forces are allowed, then I would just have the ISD BDZ the whole planet and take ZERO Imperial casualties. Warriors would be somewhat effective against stormtroopers, but significantly less effective than they were against the MI (from the movies, or the books), and tanker bugs are only available in very small quantities-not enough to make any huge strategic or tactical advances against stormtrooper legions (ie. not enough to turn the tide). Dooku, all of your arguments are very tired and I really don't want to debate this any further since I think that the victor of such a battle is self-evident. Stormtroopers would slaughter MI OR bugs or both. Wholesale.

Your attempt to seem more educated by acknowledging another's argument is worthless because the other side of the argument is WRONG. You seem LESS educated for attempting to attack some of my points with worthless examples and pseudo-logic.

Subnormal · Post by **Subnormal** » 2002-07-27 06:46pm

You seem to state that the imperials only get stones DROPPED on them and then the force knocking them down, but you fail to notice that most of the hits are caused more by thrown stones about the size of a fifty cent peice, and by arrows. I was not talking about stones that were thrown down onto troopers, I was talking about stones thrown at them. The ewoks are about averagely 2 1/2' tall and probably have less strenth then a man, their bows are small, and don't have the strength of an anciet long bow, and yet they cause pain to the stormtroopers, the amount of force caused by these objects is small but they still caused pain, If you don't believe me watch ROTJ again. I am sorry if I may have sparked a stupid topic, and I am sorry if I haven't reviewed all of the evidence, but you take to much pride in the Empire and it's abilities, and yet there is proof against it, even if it is small and insignifigant. I now realize using the deathstar as an example was pretty fullhardy, but there is still evidence against the strength of Stormtrooper armor. My evidence is all canon even if it is pretty idiotic or stupid, it still has meaning.

Subnormal · Post by **Subnormal** » 2002-07-27 06:50pm

I would also like to state that the MI doesn't throw stones, and bullets fly a hell of lot faster then stones and would cause an even more significant amount of damage to a stormtrooper then stones or boulders could ever do. Also at the end of Starship troopers they show prototype weapons and say that they have increased their military technology, as par the rocket launcher that completely obliterated a rock face of solid stone. The nuke tipped rockets would surely obliterate stormtrooper armor.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-27 06:53pm

countdooku wrote:You seem to state that the imperials only get stones DROPPED on them and then the force knocking them down, but you fail to notice that most of the hits are caused more by thrown stones about the size of a fifty cent peice, and by arrows. I was not talking about stones that were thrown down onto troopers, I was talking about stones thrown at them. The ewoks are about averagely 2 1/2' tall and probably have less strenth then a man, their bows are small, and don't have the strength of an anciet long bow, and yet they cause pain to the stormtroopers, the amount of force caused by these objects is small but they still caused pain, If you don't believe me watch ROTJ again. I am sorry if I may have sparked a stupid topic, and I am sorry if I haven't reviewed all of the evidence, but you take to much pride in the Empire and it's abilities, and yet there is proof against it, even if it is small and insignifigant. I now realize using the deathstar as an example was pretty fullhardy, but there is still evidence against the strength of Stormtrooper armor. My evidence is all canon even if it is pretty idiotic or stupid, it still has meaning.

I grow tired of debating this point, so it will be the last time. The stones that were thrown from slings were moving very fast. They would have had a significant amount of KE to them, and possibly enough to cause some injuries even if the armor did not fail. The noises the stomies made when hit by such stones seemed more like surprise to me, rather than pain. All of the arrows that I have seen hit killing stormtroopers hit one of the joints. You can see many of them bouncing off stormtrooper armor without any effect. I have seen RotJ more than three hundred times, I think I would know what was going on. I take no pride in the Empire's abilities, I am merely stating the facts.

I also like how you say that Ewoks likely have less strength than humans because they're short. Do you know how strong a Chimpanzee is?

Subnormal · Post by **Subnormal** » 2002-07-27 07:09pm

I don't think I stated that arrows or stones would kill Stormies I was just making a comparision that Stormies armor is ineffective against KE weapons. I was trying to say that if a Stormie screams or yelps when hit by a stone or arrow, that he would surely by highly injured by a high velocity bullet of high calibre. The bullets would cause severe internal injury and almost certain death if hit in the helmet or chest. I also tried to state the point that the MI KE weapons would cause harch internal injuries which are hard to treat, and deadly. Im not to sure if Bacta can repair someone who is horribly damaged internally. I can almost quarantee if someone was shot no matter what type of armor by a KE weapon like the one the MI use would surely knock them down or kill them.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-27 07:23pm

Okay, first of all, I am getting very tired of this debate, because I think I have won several times.

Having said that, I will admit that stormtrooper armor does not provide complete protection from projectile weapons. Its protection from projectile weapons is limited to areas with the white, plastic-looking armor. It does not extend this protection to the areas where we can see the black body-suit. Bullets do not have sufficient KE to injure someone seriously without penetrating. If I shoot a man with a Kevlar vest on, he will be bruised. If I add a ceramic plate behind that Kevlar vest, he will not be bruised because the impact will be distributed over a greater area. In either case, it is likely that he will be ready to continue during a firefight. Bullets DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MOMENTUM TO PHYSICALLY KNOCK SOMEONE OFF THEIR FEET. Don't believe me? Get a hundred and fifty pound sandbag, stand it up, and strap a Kevlar vest on it. You can shoot it all day, and unless the weapon you are using penetrates the vest, the sandbag will not go down (alternatively, you can just read Blackhawk Down, or any similar book). When you see someone fly back in movies after he has been shot, smile, knowing that that would not have happened in real life. Unless a MI soldier could score a hit on a joint in the armor (which would eventually happen), a stormtrooper would not be injured by such an attack. Please note that although the POSSIBILITY of death remains for the stormtrooper, the armor provides a TREMENDOUS combat advantage for the stormtroopers. The volume of fire that must be delivered to kill a stormtrooper goes up exponentially, allowing the stormtroopers to survive for longer in combat than the MI.

Regarding Bacta (not really relevent, but I'll talk about it). Bacta is an incredible substance. If it actually existed it would be a godsend. Bacta heals people completely, and can heal grievous injuries that would otherwise be unservivable. There are limits to what it can do. While it can heal severe internal injuries, it CANNOT regrow tissue that otherwise would not regrow. It cannot regenerate tissue that would otherwise not regenerate. It can dramatically accelerate the recovery process, regrow nerve tissue, bone, skin, and muscles. It can also allow organs to recover. Bacta takes time to do this (it is not instantaneous), and it cannot resurrect people from the dead. It is unlikely that it would be of tremendous utility during combat because it takes a significant amount of time to work (though not nearly as long as waiting for tissue to heal naturally). I didn't even think of mentioning it during the debate, until you brought it up.

Subnormal · Post by **Subnormal** » 2002-07-27 07:41pm

So your saying .30 calibre bullets can't penitrate Kevlar. A .30 calibre can go throw lightly armored tanks. Guaranteed to kill or knock over anyone.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-27 07:45pm

No, I'm saying that bullets just don't have the KE to knock someone down. Actually, you're right, that isn't completely true. A fifty caliber round has enough power to do so. I also never said that it wouldn't go through Kevlar. The .30 caliber cartridge MIGHT be powerful enough to knock someone down, but it certainly could not cause the kind of internal injuries you were talking about unless it penetrated the armor (which, on a stormtrooper, it could not do). I think that the staying power in this fight belongs to the stormtroopers, especially since they can carry more ammunition than the MI can (energy over physical ammunition).

LordShaithis · Post by **LordShaithis** » 2002-07-27 07:54pm

The MI from the novel beat everyone in ground combat. The MI from the movie lose to everyone in ground combat. Neither of them seem to have the starships to compete with the Empire overall.

Subnormal · Post by **Subnormal** » 2002-07-27 07:54pm

We can't fully test any of this as we don't have Storm trooper armor nor do we have the full KE firepower of the MI weapons. But cannot the MI update their weaponry as they appear to have laser or blaster technology as par the Turrets surrounding the defense ring around the Moon. In real life imperial armor is plastic, in the Movies it's an impenitrable peice of equipment, I still don't believe any of the armor could stop the shock of a high calibre bullet, as say a bullet to the helmet would possibly break the Stormies neck from the force, being as the helmet is very large and cumbersome, and easy to hit. I understand you arguments and I will discontinue posting and discontinue this argument, but It would of been cool to see thousands of warrior bugs, and MI blasting away at thousands of Imperial troops no matter who the winner.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-27 07:58pm

Countdooku, you are still ignoring the evidence from Lightsabers. A spear has a hell of a lot more force behind it than a bullet. If a spear could not penetrate the armor (despite the fact that the impact hurled the young man across the room), a bullet would have no chance of doing so. And the spear did not even compromise the integrity of the armor! The man continued wearing the same piece! You are correct, we have no way of testing this, but the lower limit of the armor's stopping power is that it can stop a metal weapon thrown at very high speed. The upper limits for firearms are well established. Small arms fire's upper limits are lower than the lower limits for Stormtrooper armor.

Subnormal · Post by **Subnormal** » 2002-07-27 08:12pm

.30 cal = 3,000+ Feet per second.
Spear = 30- 40 Feet per second.
I wonder which has the greater force.

What kind of spear was this. A stone or steel tipped one.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2002-07-27 08:20pm

I wonder if countdooku is related to IXJac, or knows of him. Same basic thought process.

And .30's are always tank killers? And to think a snubnose revolver was useless in this day and age.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2002-07-27 08:24pm

Dooku it was a jagged metal spear to be exact

Yes thats not exact I know

But the KE required to completly lift a 150?-170 pound young human male adult and fling him five feet or so into a wall, note he SLID down, indicating that he would have gone a much farther distance had that wall not been there to stop him

Any? More Math Intellgent than I?
Acutal this is exactly the Job For Wong and that Engineer degree

Subnormal · Post by **Subnormal** » 2002-07-27 08:25pm

I know not who that person is, nor do I understand his thought process nor do I want to think like him, if you could please enlighten me to his personallity, I would change my thought process. Thank You.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2002-07-27 08:32pm

countdooku wrote:I know not who that person is, nor do I understand his thought process nor do I want to think like him, if you could please enlighten me to his personallity, I would change my thought process. Thank You.

He's famous for many things, including claiming you can't gain momentum data from KE data, and claiming that a spear that flings a man across the room like a rag doll is not as powerful as a bullet. Needless to say, his entire argument was bluffing and bad math. Check out SD.net's Hate Mail section, look for the name 'IXJac'.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-27 08:37pm

Actually, Wong already has. The relevent passage is copied and pasted below, but the complete essay can be found at: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/index.html

"The novel "Lightsabres", from the Young Jedi Knights series, contains a sequence of events which helps demonstrate the mechanical strength of stormtrooper armour:

"Qorl stood inside the training chamber holding a wicked-looking spear in his black-wrapped left hand. His droid replacement gripped the gleaming shaft with enough force to dent the metal."
...
"He cocked his droid arm back - and hurled the deadly weapon ..."
"Norys slammed into the wall, his helmet ringing against the hard metal bulkhead. His vision sparkled with impending unconsciousness."
...
"He looked down at his chest in amazement and saw only a nick in the white armor where the spear had struck."
Qorl's droid used its superhuman strength to throw a spear with such great force that it lifted a man off his feet and hurled him against a nearby wall. It should be noted that we have no materials in real life that can be manufactured in lightweight thin plates and yet retain such strength against deformation or cracking. Moreover, no real-life assault rifle fires projectiles with anywhere near enough momentum to throw a man around like a rag doll, so this means that stormtrooper armour is basically impervious to present-day small-arms fire (not to mention the shrapnel that is ejected by anti-personnel weapons). A real-life soldier would have to score direct hits with concussion grenades or use a very heavy tripod-mounted gun in order to kill a stormtrooper through his armour (contrast this with Federation soldiers, whose pajamas wouldn't be of much use against an M-16). Blaster bolts are much too powerful to block, but by blocking shrapnel, a stormtrooper's armour ensures that the enemy must score a direct hit in order to kill the man inside."

Subnormal · Post by **Subnormal** » 2002-07-27 08:42pm

I was thinking more toward the movie canon compared to the EU which to me doesn't exist. I enjoy the movies far more then an EU book, or comic book. The movie is far more canon then a book.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2002-07-27 08:45pm

countdooku wrote:I was thinking more toward the movie canon compared to the EU which to me doesn't exist. I enjoy the movies far more then an EU book, or comic book. The movie is far more canon then a book.

Sadly, the EU is Official, and admissable under Lucasfillm's rules. Unless you're Dark Star, in which case you're insane.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-27 09:04pm

Wong deals more with calculations when some idiotic Trekkie goes after that passage, here: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/index.html This is in his Hate Mail page. IxJac is one of my favorite idiots....

"Sigh ... I suppose I might as well explain elementary high school kinematics, since if IXJac is any indication, our education system has obviously failed us completely. The force produced by a collision is not simply its momentum with the units magically changed from kg*m/s to N. In order to calculate force, you need to divide the momentum change by the time duration. I've said before that there's more than one way to skin a cat, so I am about to show how you perform an impact analysis using momentum and velocity alone.

Let's say you're wearing rigid armour with no travel, and a projectile hits you with 10 kg*m/s of momentum. In order to determine the reaction force, you need to figure out how long it will take to stop (let's neglect your own acceleration, since it will be negligible compared to the bullet's velocity). In this idealized scenario, the armour doesn't deform at all, so the entire deceleration zone must be in the bullet itself. Suppose the tip squashes so that the bullet becomes 6 mm shorter during the impact (I just made that figure up; if you're a firearms geek, I'm sure you can get more accurate figures). This gives you 6 mm of deceleration space, and if the initial velocity was 1000 m/s, you have all the information you need. Simply remember that displacement = ½at², perform some substitutions, and you'll find that the bullet must stop in roughly 12 microseconds.

Divide the momentum by 12 microseconds, and you'll find that you need to apply more than 800 kN to stop that bullet! That's a bit higher than IXJac's 10 N figure, isn't it? Now, let's go back to that 3 mm wide impact area. The bearing stress on that area would be 800 kN divided by 7E-6 m², or more than 100 GPa! Since the strongest alloys in the world can handle less than 2 GPa, it's no wonder a rifle bullet will put a dent in just about anything, eh? But in order to punch out a hole clean through the plate, you've got to do a bit more work. You need shear out an 8 mm wide hole (wide enough for the 7.62mm bullet to pass through), and if it's a 5mm thick plate, the load-bearing area is roughly 18 times larger, so the shear stress drops to about 6 GPa. Unfortunately, this is still too large, which is why you need a bit of "give" in your body armour.

Realistically, the armour doesn't fit perfectly on your body. Moreover, your body is not rigid (even the armour isn't rigid). The combination of body armour, thickness, and deflection, in conjunction with your body's temporary deformation will all add some breathing room (let's say 1.5 inches). This would increase the deceleration zone from 6 mm to 44 mm, thus increasing the deceleration time from 12 microseconds to 88 microseconds. The reaction force would drop from 800 kN to 114 kN, the bearing stress would drop to 16 GPa, and the shear stress would drop to less than 900 MPa, which is within the limits of modern steel alloys. Mind you, this is still an idealized analysis; I am neglecting the effect of bending moment and the time of travel through the armour, both of which would further decrease the load. Moreover, I am using a fixed deformation on the part of the bullet, when realistically, you must compare the bullet's mechanical strength to the armour's mechanical strength to see which one will take the brunt of the damage. As I mentioned before, high speed photography shows rifle bullets disintegrating upon impact with very hard armour, so virtually all of their KE actually ends up going into self-destruction.

In the case of the spear-throwing incident, the tiny nick on the armour indicates that it is much stronger and tougher than the metallic spear, otherwise there should have been more damage. The human brain can withstand up to 300 G's of transient (as opposed to sustained) acceleration without injury, and the subject nearly lost consciousness from the impact against the far wall despite his padded helmet, so it seems likely that he was near the threshold. If we assume 1 inch of deflection from the helmet padding (which you can see in the SWVD), this means his head must stop in roughly 4 ms, and he was moving at speeds of up to 12 m/s, even if we disregard the braking effect of his feet sliding across the floor beneath him before impact. This gives him around 1000 kg*m/s of momentum (assuming 80 kg body weight). Even if the spear's mass was quite large (say, 10 pounds), it would still have to be moving at 220 m/s (around 500 miles per hour!) in order to send him flying backwards so violently. Small wonder they used a robot instead of a human to throw the spear, eh? Given the same 44 mm deflection, the reaction force exceeds 2.5 MN (although according to IXJac, force is completely irrelevant ... snicker). When you plug these figures into the equations used above for the bullet, keeping in mind how little damage was done to the armour and what a tiny contact area the "nick" would have been, you will see why I concluded that stormtrooper armour can deflect small-arms fire, even if it wasn't intuitively obvious to you before.

And now for the $64,000 question: how are you supposed to perform these analyses using only kinetic energy? The KE balance would indicate that either projectile carries dozens, perhaps hundreds of times as much energy as it needs to do the work, so now what? Any ideas? Would IXJac deign to explain his wondrous methods to us? Energy balances do not tell us anything about what happens during a process. They only help us determine limits, and we can use them for correlations, but they're not magic. You still need to do old fashioned mechanical analysis if you want to figure out what will happen during the process."

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-27 09:05pm

countdooku wrote:I was thinking more toward the movie canon compared to the EU which to me doesn't exist. I enjoy the movies far more then an EU book, or comic book. The movie is far more canon then a book.

You are correct. If the movie and the official material disagree, then we go with the movie. This is NOT one of those times, however. The movie and the official material on the subject match very well.

BTW, countdooku, are you related to IXJac? You spew out many of the same arguments in much the same way.

Subnormal · Post by **Subnormal** » 2002-07-27 10:28pm

I've never even heard of him, and I know noone in of my relation that is deeply into Star Wars. I do have another small peice of canon info that is very interesting. Now it deals with Scout troopers, yes I know, lighter armor and so on but it should be about the same thickness and degree of strength. Now the Scout Troopers completely become disentegrated when they crash into trees on speeder bikes. Now I don't know how fast the speeder bikes are going, and I don't feel like doing the math but I will do it by site reference. You can see the Speeder and the rider hit the tree, you cannot see the bullet of a 30 cal. when it hits its target. You probably could of seen the spear as it came flying toward you also, This means the spear should of caused more damage depending on its speed. Now compared to site reference the 30 cal. bullets would easily be able to go through Imperial armor. As when the Scouttrooper hits the tree he and his armor explode into burnt crisps. The armor as you say should of been able to survive the explosion and the force of the tree hit, but it is disolved into nothing. According to site reference the 30 cal would easily penetrate the imperial armor. Also after rewatching ROTJ. You can easily see that the stormtroops scream when being hit by objects, as seen in the scene where the stormtroopers are firing on Han and leia at the backdoor, when they are surprised from behind, I believe it was three stormtroops. The ewoks only have clubs with rocks tied to the ends and the storm troops only scream when hit, thus meaning they are feeling pain with each hit. Also if you go back to when the Ewoks are first slinging stones, the second imperial to get hit, doesn't have the rocks and string tie around his neck, instead the rocks and string in a ball hit him in the face, this is followed by a scream of agony, and he falls backward onto the ground.

And if you say the EU is official, in a horrible book called Zorba the Hutt's revenge they have about 5 or 6 people in a Y-Wing this is obsurd, and completely impossible to the films which only have one man a Y-wing.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-28 01:14am

countdooku, your persistence is impressive but your points are not. We do not see the scoutroopers disintegrate when they hit trees. In fact, we see one of them bounce off of a tree as if nothing had happened to his armor (though he may have been injured from hydraulic shock). A thirty caliber round would not penetrate stormtrooper armor, I have NO idea where you found that. All of the calculations that I have done, and that Mike Wong has done indicate that it has nowhere near the stopping power of a spear thrown with the force that the spear was in Lightsabers. In RotJ, when we see the Ewoks attack the stormtroopers, we see the Ewoks strike the stormtroopers several times. We then switch POV's to the bunker, and the stormtroopers are STILL FIGHTING. The Ewoks were obviously able to do one of several things after the stormtroopers were knocked out of our FOV. They were able to remove parts of the stormtrooper's armor and kill/disable them, use their weapons to target parts of the stormtroopers not covered by their armor (or use bladed weapons, which they might be using), take the Imperial's weapons, which have been shown to be capable of killing stormtroopers easily and use those on the troopers, or simply hit the stormtroopers with enough force to break their necks. BTW, the armor did not deserve into nothing. We saw the trooper hit the STUMP (I assume that's the incident you were talking about), our view of the trooper is then obscured by the flames, and later we see the stump again, without the armor. Here is where your theory breaks down, the rebels (Han) had already been over there, looking for Leia. They had obviously picked up much of the debris, including Leia's hat. In any case, they would have HAD to have moved the debris in order to protect their secrecy, because the Imperials would have been looking to see what had happened to their buddys.

The second Imperial hit with a sling stone (note how originally you had said that these rocks were THROWN, giving me the impression that you were talking about the rocks being thrown at the stormtrooper from the log) was hit in the face. That is analogous to being punched in the face. The armor was able to stop the penetrative potential of the stone, and to distribute the impact, but it still would have been analogous to being hit with an airbag (at the least). That is enough to disorient someone, or even knock them down. I really don't see why you don't understand this part of the story. If the trooper had remained standing with no loss of balance, I would have been very surprised because of the conservation of momentum. Armor cannot allow someone to violate the laws of physics. If I swing a baseball bat at someone wearing a suit of armor, he will still be knocked down even if the armor does not fail. Incidentally, most of the stormtroopers do not appear to cry out in pain, but surprise. That is how I read their vocal inflections (though, that could be caused by their equipment).

Now, by far your worst point was the part about the spear and the bullet. NO. You cannot see a bullet as it flies toward you. I have no idea why this is the least bit relevent to you, but it appears to be. An invisible projectile that does no damage is no more than a minor annoyance. You can see a spear as it flies towards you, except that the person in Lightsabers was standing INSIDE A ROOM with someone, and was surprised to be attacked. He did not have time to dodge the weapon, which imparted FAR more force upon the target than a thirty, or even a fifty caliber bullet would have. In fact, it imparted more force than many small artillery pieces would have. It WOULD have done more damage if it was moving very fast, but it was. If you had bothered to read the last post I made, you would know that the person who was hit nearly blacked out from acceleration and deceleration (the spear threw him across the room). Human tolerances for acceleration are well known. If the spear was thrown hard enough to nearly knock a person unconscious from acceleration, it would have had to have had VASTLY more momentum than any small arms we have today.

Countdooku, I cannot debate someone who refuses to read my posts. Since you completely disregarded what you SHOULD have learned from my last few posts, you now come back and tell me an essentially unmodified version of your last post. ALL of your points have been told to me and others by Trekkies and other idiots in the past. You have said NOTHING original in all of this time. I am tired of reiterating. Read my posts, find out why your theories are incorrect, and then start reading the site that is allowing you to waste its board space with your time-honored arguments. You SHOULD be able to learn why your statements about stormtrooper armor are incorrect.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-28 02:24pm

BTW, remember that the order goes like this: Movies, scripts, novelizations, radio dramatizations, books, comics. If a book or a comic disagrees with a movie about something, we choose the movie's information as being accurate and disregard the book or the comic. There are two versions of Y-Wings. One of them is the one-seater, and the other one is a two-seater model, with a pilot and a gunner. This one was not seen in the movies, but is very well documented. That does not make Zorba the Hutt's Revenge accurate, but it is a detail I figured I should mention since you said that Y-Wings only have one pilot.